Say Goodbye
by fooboo24
Summary: "...I never say goodbye." "But you did." She did say goodbye to him, did leave him by himself, all for what she believed to be the better. She never considered just how devastating his loss would be, though. Akihito Kanbara/Mirai Kuriyama, Akirai, Miraki. Takes place as an alternate ending to Episode 10's dream sequence.


**Author's Notes:** I wrote this as an alternate ending to the dream they were in, as if it had repeated multiple times, but always ending differently - kind of like Homura and Kaworu, I guess? This is a super, super angsty mess but I kind of like it so… yeah.

Also he first sentence and second to last sentence are lyrics from Daisy, the ED of the anime.

~P~

**Say Goodbye**

~P~

_"I wanna be with you…"_

~P~

He had been standing in the literature club's activity room just a few moments previous, but upon feeling a weight on his chest and blinking downwards at its source, he finds himself in a field of sunflowers. They are wilting, half-dead and down-turned from the dusky sunset that paints the sky. A heatless, gentle light glows around them from a source Akihito can't see, a sun he can't find. He peers around only momentarily, and in every direction these dying flowers seem to stretch endlessly, for miles and miles so that he cannot make out an end or beginning. All is quiet, all is still and he can hear his heartbeat pulsing in his ears. The place is familiar to him, but not, and he can't quite place whether he's been there before.

It's too silent for his liking, but he doesn't say anything. He can't bring himself to for some reason, and doesn't want to for another.

Despite the off-putting setting, a sense of peace fills Akihito. He knows it's because of the strangely calming environment along with being with the one person that matters most to him that he feels anything at all beyond an odd, almost sickening numbness. He doesn't know why, but despite how serene he feels, the atmosphere surrounding him and Mirai is off - it's heavy, thick, stifling, seeping into and sucking at him and it makes Akihito unsettled and nervous.

Something awful is about to happen, he can feel it in his core.

His suspicions are confirmed when he tries to look down at Mirai's face, and instead of the soft, reassuring smile he had been expecting, hoping to see, her head is pressed against his chest, down-turned and sad like the sunflowers. She won't look at him, can't look at him, and that's how he knows that something is wrong, that something bad is going to happen to them.

He remembers how just seemingly seconds beforehand, Mirai had confessed to him that they were living in a dream - that everything that had happened to him that day had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination conjured up by the last bit of her blood that resided in his body. None of it was real, none of it actually happened. She is not Mirai Kuriyama, but just a part of her. He swallows as this realization really, truly dawns on him, and that unsettled part of him grows a little bit warier of what is to come, of how the situation could possibly turn out.

Mirai speaks then, but does not look up at him. "But the dream is about to come to an end. Senpai, you're going to wake up soon."

Her words ring in his ears, bringing both a dread he doesn't know how to act upon and a painful emptiness, but he's sure he's heard them before. This is not the first time she's said them to him; this is not the first time he's listened to them. They continue to resound in his ears hauntingly, and so he responds simply so that he has something else to focus on besides those sentences that make him feel so desperately hollow and useless inside.

"Kuriyama-san…"

Mirai does not smile at his uttering of her name, because she can't - it hurts too much to even think about it and it would be yet another lie concealing how she felt. She takes comfort in it, though - in his voice, his closeness, and his warmth and feels herself begin to crack. Tears prick her eyes and she's afraid she might break down and cry in front of him, might give way to how she truly feels, even after she's tried so hard to hide those emotions and pretend all is fine. She needs a way to distract herself before they pour of her eyes and reveal everything he need not know, yet that she wants him to, but she also needs to vent, to let at least a bit of her dam break loose to ensure that later on her emotions will not overflow and threaten to show themselves in their entirety all over again.

So when he shifts minutely closer to her, she takes her chance, and with a deep, shaky breath and a grip of her hand on his shirt, she stands on her toes and brings her lips to his. Akihito's eyes widen at the action, at the soft, inviting pressure against his mouth, and smiles through the painful throb in his chest as she tugs him closer to make up for the height difference. When he responds to the kiss, the chasteness it was supposed to hold is replaced by something needier that both willingly give into.

She can no longer prevent herself from pouring her heart out to him - she's gone through this repetition too many times, kept quiet for too long, and it shows in the way she allows her tears to fall freely from her eyes and wet his cheeks, how she kisses him harder than before, not caring for subtleties any longer. Akihito feels his own eyes water but squeezes them tighter so tears do not fall, for her sake, and instead draws her a bit closer, presses his lips to hers a bit more gently as the heat of the moment passes and gives way to emotional exhaustion and fragility.

When they separate, Mirai feels an immediate loss of warmth and even though she wants to kiss him again or pull him into an embrace, she looks directly at him with a false confidence supporting her. He deserves to see her how she actually is, broken emotions and tears and all - no more lies this time. Akihito can only stare, confused, scared - he doesn't know what to say or do because he doesn't know what's going on around him anymore. What is going to happen to her? To him? Just how strongly does she feel about him? Does she love him as much as he loves her? He wants to comfort her but doesn't know how to go about it, and when he finally decides on raising his hand to brush away her tears, she steps away from him.

No, he must see her, and she must face, once and for all, how she feels about him.

Inwardly, Mirai has never been more frightened, never wanted to tremble so badly, though externally she maintains a still, tear-stained expression. She's played through this scenario before, many, many times, but something is different about this time and she already knows what it is. This is the last time they will go through this painstaking process, the last moments they will get together because after this, he will wake up and she will be gone. She knows this because she can feel the words trying to leave her tongue rather than dying before leaving her mouth like the times before, and that she did it, she really did kiss him this time, unlike the others. This is fate giving her one last chance to make clear and express how she feels, and she'll be damned if she lets it go so easily.

She brings herself closer again and carefully reaches for his hand, trying to make sure hers isn't shaking. Slowly, she steadies her emotions, confident in what she is about to say to him, and she looks up at him and smiles genuinely for the first time since they became trapped in that nightmare. The blood and flesh Mirai may have already been gone, but her feelings for Akihito were not, manifested into the version of the girl he saw before him. She was Mirai in a way, and her feelings for him were true despite this. With this in mind, she softly, but surely, speaks, palming at her wet eyes in a useless attempt to quell the continuous waterworks escaping them.

A part of Akihito realizes what is about to happen, and his chest constricts painfully and his throat tightens in pent up frustration, but he still says nothing, though he's sure his face is portraying his inner turmoil perfectly. He instead resolves to listen to her completely and utterly, to let her do this and not interfere despite how he feels, to memorize her words and her face as she says them so that he may retain the moment when it all ended for good. Forcing himself to look at her, her sentences fill his ears and momentarily, his heart soars before dropping altogether again.

"I care about you more than anything or anyone. You… you gave me a reason to live again - something to look forward to and enjoy each day. When I thought the entire world was against me, you were there for me when no one else was, you took the time to get to know me like no one ever has, you understand me better than any other person and promised to never leave me behind. After all you've done for me, I think it's only fair to tell you this before I go… I-I love you, sen- Akihito. I love you so much."

And it's then it happens, that the entire atmosphere shifts and it is time. Akihito doesn't have time to process her confession properly, to tell her he loves her back - all he can do is realize what is occurring around them, shake his head furiously, deny it all and reach out desperately for her as she begins to disappear before him. This can't happen, it can't end like this - he won't let it.

"…Farewell." She gives him one last glimpse of that genuine smile of hers, hoping that it will last in his memory, that it will do in place of her absence. Akihito can't and won't accept this, but as he launches forward to grab her, to keep her with him, that final bit of her that remains there flutters away, leaving him alone for a fraction of a second.

The next time he opens his eyes, he is no longer is that endless field of sunflowers, but a small hospital room, still all by his lonesome, tears in his eyes. His mind and heart are both jumbled, unable to comprehend it all. Where is he - is this still the dream? More importantly, where is _she_? Both of his questions are answered when he turns his head to the seat beside him, where a familiar pair of red glasses sit.

In that moment, he feels sick, empty, and pathless all at once. He is displaced and without her, cannot be aligned again. The gravity of it all really hits him, and he clutches at his chest, at the hole it has become. She's gone. She's gone.

She's _gone_.

He lays there, unmoving, and once again doesn't know what to do, what exactly to feel besides lost. Barely remembering to even breathe, he looks out the window and watches the gingko of autumn outside silently, only sure of one thing that he never got to say.

"I love you, too."

~P~

_"…I never say goodbye."_

~P~

"But you _did_."


End file.
